Let food be your medicine…

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The Hippocratic Oath: A Promise to Abstain from Doing Harm

How many know about the Hippocratic Oath and its origin? I am sure some people have heard the Latin quote: Primum non-nocere -“First do no harm“. In the ancient writings in the Hippocratic Corpus in Epidemics it states: “The physician must…have two special objects in view with regard to disease, namely, to do good or to do no harm. Those who earn a degree as medical doctors supposedly take this oath. However, how many actually live up to it? I am sure that the doctor responsible for it, Hippocrates, would be appalled at the state of the medical profession today.

Hippocrates (460 BC – 370 BC) was born on the Greek island of Kos, which is off the coast of Turkey and is located close to the island of Rodos (Rhodes). He lived during the Age of Pericles who was a very great Athenian statesman. In 1990 I was given, the gift of a lifetime, a 24 day trip to Greece. I made it a point to visit Kos, because I admired Hippocrates. I had a great deal of respect for this teacher. His writings influenced me, as he was a very advanced thinker . One of his thoughts: “Let food be your medicine and medicine be your food.”

Hippocrates was the first to hold the belief that the body must be treated as a whole – and not just a series of parts. He accurately described disease symptoms and was the first to write them down He was imprisoned for 20 years, because his viewpoints were not in sync with common knowledge. People of his time thought disease occurred, because you were being punished by the gods they believed in or from other superstitions. He separated the discipline of medicine from religion, believing and arguing that disease was not punishment inflicted by the gods, but rather the product of environmental factors, diet and living habits.

Kos (in 1990) had a 500 year old Plane Tree; a descendant of the original Plane Tree said to have stood 2400 years ago. Hippocrates was said to have sat under this tree when he taught his students. It was located in the town proper, about two miles from his center. I walked on a straight road to his center, Asclepion, which was located on a high slope west of town. From his center you could look across the water of the Mediterranean Sea to the coast of Turkey. It was a memorable view.

There was not much to see at Asclepion; only a number of ancient stone buildings and remnants of pillars. However, I felt exhilarated,; knowing I was walking where Hippocrates had walked. As I slowly made my way back to town, I went to look for the Plane Tree. It was not as large as I had imagined it to be. It had branches that were low lying and spread out. It had metal scaffolding holding up some of its branches. I visualized his students being grateful for its leafy shade during the warm days that he spent teaching them.

Here it is over 2300 years later, and many doctors don’t seem to have much more comprehension about the causes of disease than the contemporary doctors that ridiculed Hippocrates at that time. . Only a small number of doctors today are approaching the causes of disease as dietary and environmental. Their education consists of treating symptoms mainly with drugs and operations. Very few are truly very knowledgeable in nutrition or are aware of the possible environmental hazards that could create health problems. It really was incredible that a thinker such as Hippocrates existed so long ago.

Are you aware of the word Iatrogenic? It means doctor-created illness. There were so many problems that had been created by modern medicine that this word was coined. The title doctor does not always confer competency, knowledge or healing skills on the bearer of this degree. I have learned to ask questions and not accept every word they utter as gospel. I found out through trial and error that much of their information was erroneous. Many people are blind to the truth and believe that doctors know everything, because they have had so many years of additional learning,

However, there is a major flaw in their medical education, lack of nutritional knowledge. If a doctor doesn’t know which foods can create disease, how can he help his patients get well? I keep putting out the thought…Where can doctors go to learn, when nutritional schools are supported by grants from the food industries? A great deal of the information being taught is hype – designed to sell food products. I subscribe to three doctors newsletters and couldn’t recommend one of them as totally valid. They only know what they have read…and they are unaware that the wrong foods create cancer, heart disease and most illnesses. You can’t convince a food addict who is addicted to the wrong foods that his foods are causing the problem. Food addiction can be as bad as other addictions and even harder to break. Many doctors are so addicted to the wrong foods that they prescribe them for their patients. I have had this done in the past…and it severely affected my first child’s health. I didn’t know better, so I paid for and followed some very poor advice.

There is a gaunt authority on the internet who is dispensing nutritional advice, as if he were the Creator who made us. People trust him, because he is a medical doctor. He is dispensing poor advice regarding dairy. He probably is unaware that much of ihis information has come from the dairy industry. People aren’t taught to think. They are taught to read and accept the written word as the truth, because it is written in a book. Many doctors have been taught by the “rote learning” system, which strays from the use of logic and reason.

My father told me not to believe everything I read. He said think about what you have read and analyze it. Also, ask yourself who dispensed this information? I know a doctor who had a photographic memory. I used to envy him, because he appeared to be very brilliant. However having this type of mind can be a stumbling block, because how can one discern between what is the truth and what is error?In order to know whether something is the truth one has to learn slowly, not rapidly and let the information be processed.. This gentleman got into a great deal of trouble health-wise, because he accepted as valid all the information that he had rapidly absorbed

I learned the hard way…slowly through experience. I am like the tortoise and not the hare. It took me a long time, but I have overcome most of the problems I have faced by simply asking for guidance. Long ago, I asked the Creator to please protect my brain, when I wound up being given shock treatment and drugs in a mental hospital. I wrote about my experiences in my book Sharing from the Heart. I hoped to help prevent others from having to go through what I went through, because I starved myself in order to lose weight and wound up getting deadly shock treatments and drugs for simple malnutrition.

My late ex-husband was totally impressed with his expensive Beverly Hills physician. Why was he so impressed? He was impressed with the man’s medical degree and the high price he was able to command for his services. I took him for chemo a couple times, but he got angry at me, when I questioned his doctor about the canned liquid protein that he was being told to drink. One of the major ingredients in it was HFCS – high fructose corn syrup. I said to the doctor that this ingredient was one of the causes of tumor growth…the doctor disagreed. He said that my ex-husband needed to gain weight and this liquid protein would stop him from losing weight. Well, my ex got really angry that I had even spoken to his doctor; let alone question his dietary recommendation. He wouldn’t permit me to go with him again, when he went for his toxic chemo and then radiation treatments, which accelerated his demise. I had offered to take him into my home and help him nutritionally. His doctor had given him six-months to live…and I offered to extend it at least a few more years nutritionally. However, he called me “a fraud and a quack” and opted to go along with his doctor. He died from pancreatic cancer within the six month time-frame his doctor allotted him..

There is a lady I knew who helped her dying sister extend her life. She had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer; and given six months to live. The sister was put on the best possible diet and it gave her three extra years. I asked this lady about the foods she had fed her sister. They were better than most foods in the disease-creating Standard American Diet. However, some were not foods that I would recommend on a healing program. Recently, I read about a medical doctor who had treated patients with pancreatic cancer – and some were still living 20 years later. He was into nutrition, supplements, sunshine, fresh air, exercise and positive thinking.

It is amazing to watch people who have such total faith in a system, which has almost totally failed in solving the riddle of cancer and heart disease. The treatments being offered are costly and painful; and don’t guarantee cures. Trillions of dollars have probably gone into finding expensive solutions to these two major problems, but I have done enough reading to realize that the last thing that the medical industry wants is cures. There are major books to read on this subject written by Samuel S. Epstein, M.D. such as, The Politics of Cancer, or World without Cancer by G. Edward Griffin , or Natural Cures: They don’t want you to know about by Kevin Trudeau, etc. I have read and heard many other well known speakers elaborate on this subject.

I recently took a good look at my video on this website (it was on YouTube)…and I didn’t realize how much I had been affected by the drugs I was forced to use during my lifetime. One of them caused tardive dyskinesia. This is a condition whereby one has no control over one’s jaw or other afflicted parts of the body. It causes an involuntary movement. I am happy to say that I’ve almost overcome that problem since my video was done. If I had stayed on some of the drugs which had been prescribed for me over the last 50 years…I would not even be here. I was given some heavy-duty drugs and shock treatments, because back in 1963 doctors didn’t even have an inkling that malnutrition created mental problems. Even today nutrition-wise doctors in the psychiatric field are few and far between.

There are two books, which provide good sources for information: Natural Healing for Schizophrenia, and Natural Healing for Bipolar. Both were written by Eva Edelman with a forward by Abram Hoffer, M.D. I met them both at a medical conference in San Francisco in 2000.

My major psychiatric problem was an obsession with losing weight. I simply didn’t like being overweight. I was more critical about my weight than anyone else could be. I also had the determination to stick to something come hell or high water – and this got me into big trouble, when I dropped seven dress sizes in too short a period of time.. I wound up being given a series of shock treatments, which caused memory loss. I didn’t recall what happened to put me in the hospital. Remember the quote “People who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it”. I kept going on radical diets; counting calories for years, because my memory had been wiped out. . .

It was a miracle, when I came across a journal years later that I had kept in 1963, before I was hospitalized the first time. It contained the 600 calorie diet that I had been on for four months, before major stress pushed me over the edge. From 1963 on I was hospitalized a number of times for the same problem, but I went along with the medical treatment, because my ex-husband believed in it…and once you get into treatment by psychiatric doctors…they don’t want to let a “cash cow” go.

Do I have any other phobias, beside my weight obsession? Well, I don’t like to fly, but I have been in planes where engines have conked out or got caught in a snow storm with the plane circling O’Hare Field in Chicago for three hours …running out of fuel. After that last experience, I didn’t get in a plane for years. However, I am not fearful of germs, spiders, snakes, animals, but I don’t like cockroaches or flies. I refuse to permit them to be in my home. I am phobic about chemicals…I read labels diligently. If I can’t pronounce an ingredient, I wouldn’t put it in my mouth. I don’t use foods that contain synthetic vitamins, if at all possible. I am becoming more aware all the time of the dangers we face in our daily rituals. Little things add up over time. I believe that a woman can ingest a pound of lipstick in a year by redoing her lipstick several times daily. The long lasting chemical lipsticks can be even more toxic. Is it paranoid to be aware of what is going on?

In 1968, I went to a psychologist whom I liked, but following his advice would have set me up for “a trip to the moon.” He told me that I needed to speak up and tell my husband what I was thinking. However, I was married to a very critical, cold, man who had a very short fuse. He would go ballistic over trivial things. It was always a nice day, when he wasn’t there. If I had spoken up, I would not have lived. I was very subservient and watched every word I said.. Things were very different in the 1950’s, when I married. My husband loved having a sick wife, it made him look normal. He made sure that I went to the doctor and stayed on medication..

I had started studying nutrition in 1961, but it was far from a science. My guru was Adele Davis who promoted a high protein diet. I followed her advice for two years. The results were not good. My son and I both had to have our tonsils removed; and I got fat and lethargic. I was not happy with my weight, so I went to a health resort in Mexico called Ranch La Puerta to lose weight. I stayed on the ultra low calorie diet mentioned previously which put me into the mental hospital at the age of 29. I do know about legal drugs…I was forced to take them, because the medical field didn’t know anything about a lack of nutrients being a cause of mental illness. I was prescribed drugs and shock…for a nutritional problem. This kept me seeing a psychiatrist regularly.. It was one of the most boring experiences in my life. The one thing I learned was that psychiatrists probably aren’t one bit interested in what their patients have to say, but they make money by letting them ramble. I really noticed that the second 50 minutes elapsed…my psychiatrist knew it was time to end the session even when I was in the middle of a sentence…”Time is up!” Nutrition was not an option. Most psychiatrists still profess that vitamins are only good for creating expensive urine.

There are some medical psychiatrists who have done research into nutrition. I had the privilege of meeting Abram Hoffer, M.D. who was into this study for many years. He was the founder of Orthomolecular Psychiatry. He treated and cured patients who had schizophrenia by giving them optimal levels of nutrients and detoxifying their bodies and brains of heavy metals and other toxic material. I had first been diagnosed as being schizophrenic, then wound up being labeled bipolar. I came to the realization that these labels meant nothing. I didn’t have wide mood swings and I was normal as all get out, if I just ate enough…and got my sleep.

Another lady psychiatrist, Hyla Cass, M.D. has written some informative books on the subject of mental health and nutrition: Natural Highs: Feel Good All the Time; Supplement Your Prescription; 8 Weeks to Vibrant Health; and more.. I have attended her lectures at the annual March… Health Freedom Expo in Long Beach, California. She has some beneficial information in her books. Her information on tryptophan helped me overcome a problem I had with sleeping. I mentioned earlier that lack of sleep can put people into a mental hospital…and here is a psychiatrist that’s knowledgeable about the right kind of foods and supplements, which will help people get the nutrients they need in order to sleep. Drugs are not required by the human body, but sleep and nutrient-rich foods are

People think that doctors in general have the answers they need. I strongly agree with one M.D.…Dr. Larraine Day who has made a number of very informative CDs, such as Diseases Don’t Just Happen, Turn On The Light: Overcoming Anxiety and Depression Without Drugs, Drugs Never Cure Disease, etc. Many People keep going to doctors; thinking drugs are a solution, but they are the problem. There is not one drug that doesn’t have a side effect. I saw first hand what drugs did to my own mother. They destroyed her brain and lowered her to the level of a two year old…”Where’s Mommy? Where’s Daddy?” It convinced me to stay on a better path and keep searching for the truth. Over my lifetime, I have been given a number of problems to solve – and didn’t depend on the medical field for answers.

I went direct – right to the Highest Authority and usually in a short time answers came. I didn’t block my good through doubt or lack of faith. I used to wear a button proclaiming: Expect a Miracle! I can’t tell you how many times I have experienced miraculous protection and healing. Over thirty years ago, I wrote a manuscript entitled For Thou Art With Me, recalling all the incredible experiences that had occurred in my life. Now, I can add many more. I totally trust in an Omnipotent, Omniscient and Omnipresent Creator who is available to everyone. I am very blessed to have been given the answers I sought by trusting in a very loving Creator.

Hopefully you have experienced beautiful results in your life by simply being open to the loving energy of Our Maker. It is a wonderful feeling to sleep in the arms of the Beloved as Jalaluddin Rumi, the Sufi poet wrote about seven centuries ago.